


Sock Monsters

by andachippedcup



Series: Domestic Belle [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andachippedcup/pseuds/andachippedcup





	Sock Monsters

Belle has adapted well to life in this new world. She’s got her scars and they show often, but the pair of them manage just fine.

She’s terrified of cars, he learns. Entering small rooms with closed doors sends her into a frenzy. Her bedroom door is always ajar; there are days she even leaves the front door open, much to his chagrin. She never likes to close a door behind her; she has to see her escape route, must know it is there.

Belle meets with the cricket man twice a week, three times during her bad weeks. She takes to spending her days working or tidying in the shop. She brings life to the store, brightens it and cleans it, making it (dare he say)  _inviting_  to a passing eye. And always she’s humming a happy refrain, fingers in motion. Belle can’t hold them still. They’re always moving, darting about like minnows. She knits. She plays cat’s cradle, twirls a little keychain, plays with her clothing buttons or snatches up his hand to hold it. Always, her fingers are doing something.

But she is happy. And if she is happy, so is he.

She struggles to sleep in a bed, often opting for a blanket and the floor instead. After waking up on the floor beside her, every bone in his body utterly aching, she refuses to allow him to sleep there with her. So they sleep, him in the bed, one hand draping down to her, she on the floor, one hand propped up to hold his. And when she has the nightmares, he is there, holding her hand, pulling her into bed with him and rocking her, soothing her.

She takes to baking; the ovens and kitchenware of this world suit her and she’s whipping up lovely loaves of fresh bread and cakes and cookies and muffins. The whole town is safely supplied for with her baking, particularly Henry. The lad caught her fancy early on and whenever he comes to visit (which is quite regularly), he always leaves with a backpack weighed down with Belle’s latest baked goods.

And so she bakes. And she cleans the old house and the store. She welcomes the new tools of this world that make her chores from the old world so much easier and faster to achieve. She vacuums. She uses the lovely little Swiffer duster, the wood polish sprays, a handy little mop. They’re all genius inventions, she thinks.

All but the washing and drying machine. 

These two monsters have bested her repeatedly. She massacred his best suit by putting it through the machine on the delicate cycle, thinking that the fabric would be fine.

It wasn’t, to say the least.

She’d reduced his best shirt into clothing for a doll after shrinking it in a battle with the dryer. She apologizes profusely each time something happens; it frustrates her to no end that she keeps messing up. Failure is not something that Belle accepts, but she is repeatedly forced to at the hands of these machines. He offers repeatedly to have their clothes done through the local dry cleaners, but Belle stubbornly refuses. Instead, she recruits Mary Margaret to help her master the machines. The day Mary Margaret visits, his clothes are done correctly. No casualties.

The next week, there’s one casualty, but it’s a piece of  _her_  clothing this time - lace, she finds, fares poorly in the dryer. Even on a gentle or delicate setting.

There’s a duration of relative peace, with only the occasional mishap resulting in the loss of an article of clothing or two.

Each time a piece of clothing is lost in the ongoing war, he hands her his credit card and sends her to the clothing store. He tells her to go crazy and spoil herself (‘have a shopping spree, dearie’he tells her). She only spoils him with her purchases though, ensuring he’s dressed to the nines and always replacing a lost article of clothing with an even better one to make amends. For herself, she simply replaces things, never adding to her wardrobe’s size or variety.

But for the most part, things have toned down and clothing is relatively safe.

Until the great sock monster washer mishap - it’s a day that goes down in their personal history.

He comes home and finds clothes scattered about the house, making it look as if a department store has exploded inside their home. He’s instantly panicked.  
“Belle!” It must have been a trigger, he thinks, and she’s in one of her dark moods, hiding from her demons. He expects he’ll find her curled up, rocking in some dark corner. He goes to the closet (her usual refuge), but the door is closed (it would be open if she were inside, she’d need the escape route). He opens the door to check anyway, but she’s not in there. Odd.

He scans about the reset of the house. And then he hears it. Noise from outside.  
He goes to the backyard and there he finds an odd sight. Belle is struggling over an old washboard, raking a piece of purple clothing over it with an intensity that would have frightened him if he weren’t already at his maximum capacity for concern.

“Belle?”She stops and whirls to face him, breathing heavily. “Are you alright love?”

“Those machines,” she huffs, “have got to  _GO_! Look! Look what they’ve done to the whites!” She’s waving the sudsy bit of clothing in his face when he recognizes that it’s his best (formerly) white shirt, now dyed a pale shade of purple.

“A sock. A sock did this! One stupid,  _stupid_  little purple sock slipped into the load of whites and now everything’s  _purple_!” She yells, throwing the shirt to the ground in defeat. 

He knows she’s angry; right now she’s a raging beast from the old world, something mythological and fierce. But in spite himself, he cannot for the life of him stifle the roaring laughter that bursts out of him as he doubles over.

A  _sock_. A little sock has bested her and prompted one of the most hilarious breakdowns in history. This girl has faced clerics with scourges and flaying, has faced down the evil queen, Regina herself, and come out no worse for wear. But a purple sock? This has bested her.

——  
He has the washing and drying machines removed from the laundry room and installs a lovely large sink and drying rack into the space. If it’s the old way of doing things she wants, that’s what she’ll get.

But when he brings her into the newly designed washing room and lets her open her eyes to view the surprise, he can’t help leaving a little token. There on her drying line, held in place by one lovely little wooden pin, there is a sole purple sock.

From that day hence, the washing machine sock monster attacks no more.


End file.
